Where towable vehicles such as boat trailers, wheeled campers, and equipment hauling trailers are not in use, they are commonly parked and stored without any attachment to a towing vehicle. During such periods of non-use, the trailer's forward end towing hitch coupler is commonly left exposed, creating a dangerous risk of theft of the trailer. In a common mode of perpetration of such thefts, a criminal may access a tow vehicle having a rear end positive trailer hitch (commonly a steel ball hitch) which is adapted for use with the type of hitch coupler mounted upon the trailer. The criminal may simply back such vehicle to the trailer, engage the trailer's hitch coupler, and drive away with the trailer. Such thefts are often tragic because the trailers constitute valuable property and because the trailers themselves are converted to the criminal's use as a tool of larceny for the perpetration of further thefts of the trailers' contents.
In order to protect against such thefts, various types of locking mechanisms are known to be adapted for mechanically blocking or obstructing a criminal's attachment of a trailer's front end coupler to an unauthorized tow vehicle. However, such locking mechanisms commonly outwardly expose locking structures such as eyed flanges, shackles, bolts, posts, and the like, making them subject to being defeated through a criminal's use of cutting tools such as hacksaws, cutting torches, bolt cutters, and rotary saws.
The instant inventive hitch coupler guard solves or ameliorates problems and defects noted above by configuring a coupler guarding and locking structure to assume a pivoting clamshell or box configuration and by associating with the clamshell or box further barrier structures which are adapted for guarding against attempts to defeat the lock through use of torch cutters, saws, bolt cutters, and the like.